It was a big weekend at the box office as 3-D animated movie, Monsters vs. Aliens enjoyed the biggest opening weekend of the year so far. Horror film, The Haunting in Connecticut got off to an amazing start, coming in 2^nd, while the final new release of the weekend, action flick, 12 Rounds, stumbled out of the gates, landing in 7^th place.

Despite opening in early Spring as opposed to the more family friendly Summer season, Monsters vs. Aliens opened in first place with a robust $58.2M, exactly as I predicted. The opening was right in line with this past summers, Kung Fu Panda, which opened just north of $60M. M vs. A was able to reach $58M with the help of higher ticket prices for 3-D venues. The 3-D theatres accounted for about $25M of the overall weekend take, which is pretty impressive when you consider that Monsters opened in 4100 theatres of which only 1550 were 3-D. Monsters vs. Aliens now stands as the third best opening in the month of March ever behind 300 ($70.9M) and Ice Age: The Meltdown ($68M). With little competition on the horizon and kids off from school for Easter vacation soon, M vs. A should have a nice hold on the marketplace and continue to dominate at the box office. Monsters vs. Aliens should end up with about $180M when all is said and done.

Opening strong in second place was PG-13 horror entry, The Haunting in Connecticut, with $23M, way above my $18M prediction. The Haunting is now distributor Lionsgate’s best horror opening ever behind the Saw franchise. The Haunting in Connecticut opened to $9.6M on Friday but was down over 50% on Sunday grossing only $4.7M. This would mean that a big drop is in order for this coming weekend, I’d say about 65%.

Professional wrestler John Cena’s second action movie, 12 Rounds, opened poorly in 7^th place with only $5.3M right in line with my $5.5M projection. This is another box office dud for producer World Wrestling Entertainment and its star. I guess they should stick to what they do best… wrestling. A no brainer really.

Among holdovers, audiences continue to want to watch Nicolas Cage save the world. His latest action thriller, Knowing, fell a reasonable 40% to gross another $14.7M. Knowing performed even better than I thought it would in its second frame… I thought it would drop about 45%. Bromantic comedy, I Love You, Man enjoyed a great hold, dipping only 29%, to collect another $12.6M, pretty close to my $11.8M forecast. To see how the rest of my predictions fared, check out the chart below.